These teachings relate generally to adaptive control, and in particular, to the measurement of desired system parameters needed for feedback or adaptive control.
Feedback control systems in general and for power supplies in particular, have performance and stability limitations caused by unknown component variations. To achieve high speed transient performance it is necessary to have an accurate measurement of several key parameters. In particular, in the case of power supplies, the output capacitance may be largely unknown. This is due to the fact, that the power supply load has capacitance and it is in parallel to power supply output capacitance. Commonly, the load capacitance is in the form of additional capacitance added in the load circuit to improve high frequency characteristics and is, thus, required.
Unfortunately, the unknown load capacitance and possibly other components with significant tolerances are common occurrences in power supplies. A similar situation can occur in motor control where the motor torque constant and the load inertia are generally not known precisely enough for high speed control.
To allow for compensation for these unknown parameters it is necessary to measure them. Once these parameters are measured, calculations or gains scheduling can be used to map the measured parameters to required controller gains. Thus, there is a need for simplified digital hardware that can be used to measure the desired parameters.